By 4:30 a.m., she chats up reps on the East Coast and then moves her way west, debating lender valuations of homes and pushing for concessions.

The 27-year-old Clairemont resident does all this to help her clients close on short sales, tedious transactions in which lenders accept less than what the borrower owes on the home loan.

The short-sale negotiator, a rarity a few years ago, became necessary as short sales became lengthy and complicated.

Blank, who owns Short Sale Solutions in Clairemont, recently sat down with the Union-Tribune to talk about her work with buyers and sellers.

Q: What does a short-sale negotiator do?

A: That’s the person who puts together the financials of the homeowner who wants to do a short sale.

The negotiator works with the seller’s agent and the buyer’s agent and puts together a short-sale package for the bank.

Once it gets there, the bank assigns that file to its own negotiator. I work with that person to go over the terms of the sale, what fees the bank will pay, what fees they won’t pay, the price they will approve and how long we have to close.

Q: Why are negotiators involved?

A: They were pretty rare a few years ago. Now it’s something people expect. In the past, it was agents doing it on their own. (Some still do.)

There was a time when short sales were easily approved, because the banks didn’t see any other options and they didn’t have legal teams explaining how they were going to go after people for deficiency balances.

But now lenders have all have these departments in place. There are full loss-mitigation centers, like Bank of America, for example. They have one in Simi Valley … a headquarters just for short sales. It’s like a university-sized building.

So it’s a different ballgame now. It’s been made corporate. Short sales got harder, so negotiators became necessary.

Q: What’s a typical day like for you?

A: Well, I’m up usually at 4:30 a.m. I start working on my files that are assigned to negotiators on the East Coast because I want to get them right when they get in.

I get on the phone and start calling … to make sure the files are moving. Pushing, pushing, pushing all the time. Then I move onto West Coast files.

Q: Little-known fact about short sales?

A: Most agents are surprised at how much financials matter. Sellers and agents are under the general impression that the desire to sell your home is enough to get a short sale, that you’re underwater.

Right now, that’s not the case. You still have to substantiate financial hardship.

That’s the biggest mistake I see. In one case, it had taken about a year and a half when it got to me — the way that file was structured, it didn’t show financial hardship. So the bank had been less likely to approve the short sale. So again, working with a negotiator who knows how to analyze the financial before anything is so important.

Q: Why had that case taken so long before it got to you?

A: The 2010 taxes had said there was earned interest; it looked like there was an investment account with a lot of money.

Typically we’d address that before the file goes to the bank, but in this case, it hadn’t. We got the account statement and saw that the stocks were now worthless. So it wasn’t really an issue. But if you don’t address that with a letter of explanation and proof, then the banks are less likely to approve you for a short sale.

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Q: So, on the surface, it looked like that person didn’t have a hardship, but in reality they did?

A: Yes, but again, the bank isn’t going to dig for the hardship. You’re going to have to prove it. The bank at this point is going to assume that everyone is strategically defaulting, just trying to ride the wave of short sales. And absolutely, I get them. But there are still the majority of people who really need the help and assistance.

Q: Roughly how many people are trying to strategically default?

A: Maybe 25 percent of people who see me are completely able to pay their mortgage and are just simply looking to liquidate property.

Also, sometimes their hardship is not the monthly payment. The hardship could be they don’t have the funds to cover the amount they’re underwater. Another 20 percent are still making their mortgage payments, but they’re barely making it or something is about to change.

Q: What do you tell those people?

A: Well, the first thing is, I find out who actually owns their loans. Just because a bank or lender services your loan, doesn’t mean they own it. That’s rarely the case.

So if Bank of America is your servicer, they may just be taking your money, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (government enterprises) or a private investor or another bank like Wells Fargo could actually own that loan.

Then we find out what their terms are for short sales to make sure those terms are going to be accepted by the seller. We need to confirm that they need to be delinquent on their mortgage payment, which most likely they always do.

I legally can’t tell them to fall behind on their payments. But I can tell them, “Your investor will only consider a short sale if you’re behind.” They can take that information and make a decision that is best for them and their families.

Q: What happens in most cases?

A: They stop making payments because they’re so desperate to get rid of their underwater houses.

Q: Well, speaking of the homeowners who don’t really have hardships — or at least not yet — why would you still try for a short sale?

A: If there’s a will, there’s a way. With short sales, there’s still a real big gray area, so it’s subjective what is a hardship. If you know what the bank is looking for, it’s not very difficult to structure a file that will make sense for them to approve the short sale.

Q: Some people have said your business model of doing only short sales won’t last forever. What do you say to that?

A: We’ve got at least two years or three years of still doing this. If we see an upswing in the real estate market, then we’ll adjust.

Working for short sales is very much like underwriting a loan, except you’re trying to disprove everything versus when you’re working on qualifying for a purchase loan, you’re trying to prove everything.